Hello,
I’m sorry this is long.
My mother is in her early fifties and has been hospitalized this past April for a week and half and was discharged after she kept throwing tantrums to go back home. In the hospital, we found out she had diabetes, high cholesterol and blood pressure. She hasn’t been in a hospital for years and even refused to go when she fainted and couldn’t walk that day! 7 months later she’s still bedridden and refuses to walk even though the doctor said she needs physiotherapy and she’ll be fine, but she refuses for any kind of treatment in a hospital or at home. She’s taking her medications at least. She sleeps in the dark all day and does nothing but browse social media, we take full care of her. Feeding her and changing her all on her bed, but it’s depressing and I don’t know how long this will last. I’m the eldest of my siblings and I work a full-time job and go to school and in between I have to take care of my health by finding time to go to the gym which takes my mind off things for a bit.
But my mom expects me and my siblings who also have schools, jobs, lives and things to do to take care of her and give her our full time and attention which we do and take turns and I feel horrible when I don’t want to change her dirty diapers or don’t want to feed her, but it’s frustrating! Our lives were so much different before all this and my mother is still young and is not handicapped or anything but gets dizzy and fatigued from trying to walk which is understandable since she hasn’t walked in 7 months and in need of physiotherapy and medical care in a hospital to further check her for other problems. But every time I try to convince her to go to a hospital she loudly refuses and becomes unbearable to be around, and to top it all of I saw a faint clouding inside her left eye and I think it’s cataract which freaked me out because I didn’t notice it since she sleeps in the dark all day. If she loses her sight she’ll be depressed and not able to do the only thing that she enjoys doing which is browsing her phone. She literally has nothing else to do and I feel so sad for her and her current state, and watching her deteriorate for something that is solvable if she only accepted the help. This made me majorly depressed for 4 months that I had to seek mental help from a psychiatrist who diagnosed me with anxiety and major depression and prescribed me medication.
My mother loves all of us dearly and we love her so much and I fear something bad will happen to her if she keeps refusing to go anywhere for help.
Is she technically capable of doing things for herself? If so, you need to consider refusing to do things for her that she can do herself. If she CAN but chooses not to, you could possibly be enabling/disabling her by doing too much for her.
Can her doctor order home PT to get her moving again?
she doesn’t walk but can move her legs around and cross them. She does get dizzy if needs to stand up but refuses to try again. I tried to stop helping her numerous times but she won’t help herself. I did once bring a physiotherapist that I paid home to help her but she loudly refused and didn’t go through with it. She refuses to leaves the house to go to a hospital too, I don’t know what to do anymore
Unfortunately, it sometimes requires DRASTIC measures to get a person to see reality. If you and your siblings move out for a while (and go stay with friends/relatives) leaving your mom alone, she has NO OTHER choice but to either get up out of bed and start moving again, or to ASK someone for help to GET her back on her feet again. As long as she has you children waiting on her hand and foot, what is her impetus for doing things independently?
Best of luck!! I'm really sorry you are going through this, you sure don't deserve to be.
Diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure are all bad news for a person's health but they don't by themselves stop you walking or put you in hospital. So what happened?
If your mother carries on as she is you won't probably won't have her for long. How many of you are there looking after her? What's the age range of you and your siblings?